I. For My Mother’s Mother
I grasp’d last Tuesday,
hoped unending, yet her life
pass’d to hereafter:
She, gently undone –
together, heart in hands, we
will remember her.
II. My Grandfather’s Communion
That balmy December dusk
cradled his body embalmed.
She leads the sacrificial
son – through his own cleaved heart – home
Wholly in the Truth
they serve their death-communion
in a wheat chalice
The wintered winds sigh in warm relief
welcome him to the plains returned
Crow’s feet perched on intertwined eyes
still gazing upon the hard spring
Chilled in my marrow the grave’s vow
of tomorrow: a brilliant There
They wake eternally
burning, beholding, born.
If you knew what we knew
the sun would blind you too.